27 Oct 2013

Sri Aurobindo
Ashram is known all over world as the home of Sri Aurobindo’s unique and
pathbreaking Integral Yoga. Sri Aurobindo Ashram is also the Pride of
Puducherry and occupies a central position in its cultural and spiritual
landscape.

Sri Aurobindo Ashram
is administered by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust with five Trustees at the helm of
affairs. There is no election or democratic selection process of these
Trustees. Trustees remain Trustees for life and have no accountability.

While Sri Aurobindo
Ashram Trust is a Public Charitable Trust, it does not come under the R.T.I.

As per various
reports, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust occupies over 60% of Puducherry’s prime
real estate valued at over Rs.10,000 crores by very conservative estimates. It
receives hundreds of crores in donations every year as also Income Tax
Exemptions from the Central Government and various benefits from the Government
of Puducherry.

Over the last 10
years, there have been consistent and serious reports of violations of human
rights, sexual harrasement and serious crimes against women, financial
mismanagement and evasion of taxes, etc, and all in the name of God.

The Trustees are
involved in hundreds of legal cases all over India. The Managing Trustee is
currently out on bail for forgery in a land grabbing case and the children of
other Trustees are allegedly involved in shady real estate transactions
involving crores of rupees in Public Funds. Annually, the Trustees spend crores
of rupees in legal fees from Public Funds in order to defend themselves
individually.

24 Oct 2013

T.L. Viswanatha
Iyer, retired Judge of Kerala High Court, who was appointed by the Madras High
Court in the place of Justice P.R. Raman to look into allegations of sexual
harassment of women, children and others at Sri Aurobindo Ashram, began the
inquiry on Wednesday.

Justice Raman
was relieved of the responsibility as he expressed inability to complete the
probe within three months.

He was of the
view that it would take at least six months to complete the process.

About 50
persons including complainants and respondents from inmates of Sri Aurobindo
Ashram and Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust appeared before Mr. Iyer when he began
the inquiry at a training hall of the Chief Secretariat here. Sizeable number
of women also appeared before him.

The next
hearing is likely in the first week of December.

As per the
Madras High Court direction, the inquiry would focus on whether allegations of
sexual harassment of women and children in the Ashram were true and whether
there was any truth in the allegation regarding violation of human rights and
denial of fundamental rights to the inmates.

23 Oct 2013

[We publish the second letter that Manoj Das wrote to Pranab Kumar
Bhattacharya on 15 June, 1994 (read the first letter in the previous post). Manoj
Das got the rudest shock of his life when Dada wrote back, “I have read your
letter dated 15.6.94.
Now I am absolutely convinced that you are
a fool and an idiot.”
[emphasis
added] Manoj Das still
persisted, “I feel tempted to agree with you.
Indeed, had I not been a fool and an idiot, I would not perhaps have made an effort
to make you reason our actions in a wider perspective.” He ended with a final
call for harmony and reason in a third and final letter to Dada, whom he considered
(despite the beating he received from him) “to be someone very special”. He
then took up the matter with Harikant Patel, the then Managing Trustee, who did
not want to intervene. It is said that Manoj Das then honourably resigned from
Trusteeship for “the sake of upholding truth and justice”, but it was not exactly
so. According to people close him, he resigned in a dramatic way to make a
big public scene and put pressure on Harikant Patel, which unfortunately did not happen as envisaged by him.
Instead his resignation was quietly accepted by the Managing Trustee, making it
impossible for him to come back again into the Ashram Trust Board. Both
Harikant Patel and Manoj Das Gupta, the present Managing Trustee, badly let him
down in this matter. It is perhaps because of this humble pie he had to eat, along
with the ignominy of having been insulted by one of the closest attendants of
the Mother and one of her most respected disciples, that Manoj Das learnt the political
lesson of his life ― never
to go against the Establishment. The proof of my conjecture is in
the fact that he now so faithfully toes the line of the Trustees despite their
going astray from the central tenets of the Ashram. How many times he has repeated that the
Trustees can never be wrong despite their human weaknesses, how many times he
has defended their wrong decisions with regard to the administration of the
Ashram! But what about his own case of
confrontation with Dada in June 1994? If he says he was certainly right in going against Dada at that time, then why should he raise objections now with regard to those who are presently confronting the Trustees?
– Bireshwar]

17 Oct 2013

[Of late Manoj Das is very much in the public
domain writing long-winded letters full of platitudes, without changing a wee
bit his crassly subservient attitude towards the Ashram Trustees. But in June
1994 he was a different man and he had dared to challenge Pranab Kumar
Bhattacharya, the head of the Ashram Physical Education Department. The issue
on which he mainly differed with “Dada” was the expulsion of a child, who had
been admitted into the Ashram School against the rules of the Physical
Education Dept. I will not go into the merits of the rule itself, but I will
draw the reader’s attention to the fact that Manoj Das had the guts to
challenge in writing the unfairness of the rule in general and its wrong
application in this particular case. Dada dismissed Manoj Das’s letter to him
as “simply rubbish” and told him to
mind his own business. This eventually led to the resignation of Manoj Das from
the Board of Ashram Trustees. Perhaps it is because of this shock and the
bitter pill of defeat he had to swallow that Manoj Das now faithfully toes the
line of the Ashram Trustees and writes miles of foolscap pages in their favour!
The correspondence between Manoj Das and PKB is long and will be published in
at least two instalments. ― Bireshwar]

12 Oct 2013

Justice T.L.
Viswanatha Iyer, a former Judge of the Kerala High Court, will be the enquiry
officer (EO) in the place of Justice P.R. Raman, to look into allegations of
sexual harassment of women and children in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in
Puducherry.

By consent,
in an order on August 30, Justice K.K. Sasidharan appointed Mr. Justice Raman,
also a former Judge of the Kerala High Court, to probe the allegations.
Pursuant to the order, Mr. Justice Raman conducted a preliminary enquiry. The
next enquiry is scheduled from October 23 to 26.

The EO
appeared to have received a representation from 165 persons from Odisha, stated
to be ashram devotees, and who had some information regarding the issues under
consideration. The original understanding was that the enquiry would be
confined to complaints from the inmates of the ashram and the local MLA, and as
such, it would take at least three months. The EO was of the view that it would
take a minimum six months to complete the process. He, therefore, expressed his
difficulty to continue as he had to come from Kochi frequently. He requested
that he be relieved from the engagement.

Mr. Justice
Sasidharan ordered that the enquiry would be in relation to the complaints
received by the District Collector.

The present
and former inmates of the ashram were at liberty to approach the EO, if they
were aggrieved. It was open to the EO to take a decision with regard to
participation of third parties, provided they satisfied that they were inmates
of the ashram at a particular point of time. The EO should conclude the enquiry
as early as possible and file a report before the High Court preferably by
December 31. The matter has been posted for January 2, 2014.

Comment:Retired
High Court Judge P.R. Raman, who was the previous Enquiry Officer, had called for the depositions of not only the inmates of Sri Aurobindo
Ashram but of all other disciples and devotees of Sri Aurobindo staying in or
outside Pondicherry. The enquiry was to be conducted in several stages and
different notifications were to be issued to address the different categories
of devotees and disciples of Sri Aurobindo. So how can the enquiry be limited
to only the inmates of Sri Aurobindo Ashram?

The preamble of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram
Trust Deed states that “Sri Aurobindo
Ashram is the home of persons who are the followers and disciples of Sri
Aurobindo having faith in his philosophy and yoga.” That the beneficiaries of
the Trust are the “disciples, devotees and inmates” is mentioned no less than
half a dozen times in the Trust Deed. This
was sufficiently clarified in the last and only meeting of 27th
September, 2013 presided by P.R. Raman when the question of a letter from
Orissa signed by 165 devotees had come up. The scope of the enquiry had been even
written into the minutes of the meeting by the honourable retired High Court
Judge. How can the scope of the enquiry be changed now to exclude the
non-inmates?

The information
provided by the Hindu news reporter seems to be biased and incorrect because it
sends the wrong information to the public and paves the way for a quick and
sham probe, which is what the Ashram Trustees want to get away with. A large
number of devotees and disciples apart from the inmates fully maintained by the
Ashram Trust are actually quite eager to depose in front of the Commission in
order to set things right in Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Below is a scan of a
true copy of the minutes of P.R. Raman’s first meeting at Ananda Inn on the 27th
of September 2013.

6 Oct 2013

Professor Manoj Das (nicknamed Dr.
Faustus or Byakta Manoj) wrote on 22 April, 2013 “A Suggestion for
Introspection” in reply to Sricharan Singh’s “Professor Manoj Das has Sold his
Soul to the Devil”.At the end of his
reply, he said, “Dear Editor, if I have
written this much, it is only with the hope that some of your readers might be
expecting some clarifications on statements from me. I would not like to
descend into the exercise again.” But immediately on 10 May, 2013, unable to
restrain himself any longer, he wrote another letter under the title “A Last
Appeal”. In this appeal, instead of replying to the points raised against him,
he vomited profusely his anger in the form of abuses and curses on those who
had dared to question him.

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